TURKEY TWO
October, 2010
Things to Like, things that are annoying, about Turkey
I’m getting to like cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese and olives for breakfast. It’s kind of like having a Greek salad--without the onions.
Free tea. After a meal at most Turkish restaurants you are offered a free glass of cay. Pronounced “chai” as the c has a little tail that makes it a “ch.” Acik cay means you want it half water and half tea, because otherwise it is very strong. It comes in a tulip shaped glass of three or four ounces, with two lumps of sugar on the saucer. You must hold the rim to drink it. What a nice custom.
Tourists are not usually offered real coffee. Somehow they have the idea that we want Nescafe, and that’s what we get. Real Turkish coffee, strong and in a small cup, you have to go and find in a café.
Most of the pension bathrooms have showers that are on hoses fastened at shower height just randomly stuck somewhere in the small room with a drain in the floor. There is no shower stall per se. The toilet gets sprayed, or the sink or everything. Occasionally the space is so small you cannot sit facing forward on the toilet. In addition, the rooms are usually a step up from the bedroom. In one place, it was two steps up. We both missed the first step more than once, as it was hard to see and you just are not expecting it. There do not seem to be building codes for minimal requirements.
Which reminds me of a general irritation, which is floor levels. One constantly must contend with changes in floor level from inside to out, or room to room, or sometimes within a room. Stairs too have unpredictable heights--one staircase can have several different heights of risers. This is most disconcerting to feet that think they can predict the depth of the next step based on the one just previous. We’ve stumbled and tripped and almost fallen any number of times, and are grateful to so far have remained upright. It makes us appreciate the oversight we have at home that assumes such unconformities are dangerous, which they are, and regulates them generally out of existence.
Turkish buses. They are comfortable, spacious, clean, reliable, frequent, convenient. The bus stations are often far from the center of town, but individual bus companies will collect you from your hotel and take you to the station, and the reverse, in minibuses--the procedure being called “servis.” A host serves tea, Nescafe, fruit juice, colas, sodas and water as well as sweet packaged cookies or cakes on long distance buses.. They stop for meals on occasion, but often at a company owned restaurant where the prices are inflated. We’ve been on buses that went four hours without a stop, and there is not a toilet on most of them. Smaller towns are served by a dolmus, a minibus, usually from a stop close to the center of town. You can get just about anywhere in Turkey by public bus--and in a timely manner. Costs are not dirt cheap, but moderate: $20 to go about 200 kilometers.
Baklava. Bakeries make lots of greasy, heavy sweets, but they also do a big variety of baklavas--called something else depending on the flavor: walnut, pistachio, almond and many more. All are the usual honey-based oozing confections, and delicious, but best taken in small doses.,
Turkish Delight. Turns out this is a powdered sugar covered gelatin candy in a huge variety of flavors and prices. We’ve bought a sort of generic flavor in a grocery for as little as $3 a kilo, but it’s usually more like $16 a kilo--though you generally don’t want a kilo, but 100 or 200 grams. My favorite, though I’ve only tasted a few flavors, is “the sultan,” which is coconut and pistachio, or at least that was what it was called in Selcuk. George likes lemon.
Olive oil. We love olive oil. But it’s a bit of a shock to go from thinking that, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman admonishes, a teaspoon will do on your salad, to having things cooked in oil that, if it is measured at all, must be in cups. On our recent “Blue Voyage” in the Mediterranean off Fethiye, our captain Ahmet was also the cook, and had learned in local big hotels. He knew how to make omelets, which was a treat, as usually the only eggs we’ve eaten have been hard boiled. However, he cooked the omelets in copious amounts of oil, negating, somewhat, their delectability. One dish I love, except for the oil factor, is something called “Imam Fainted.” It’s called this, we hear, either because the Imam fainted from delight at this marvelous dish, or because it required the use of so much olive oil. An eggplant is halved, its center scooped out and mixed with ground meat, this is mixed with spices and cooked in oil, stuffed into the shell of the eggplant, and the whole is simmered in olive oil until done.
Beds: Maybe if we were staying in hotels with any stars at all we wouldn‘t have this complaint, but the small pensions universally buy mattresses that are, I believe, an innerspring style that “firm“ doesn‘t begin to describe. Besides a rigidity that will put your arm to sleep if you are on your side, you risk getting poked with a spring. We remedy this somewhat by traveling with ultra light Thermarest mattresses--after bone jarring experiences sleeping in Asia.. Usually the pillows are okay, but occasionally they feel like they have about as much give as a basketball.
A Wallet Found
Recently we set off on a seven kilometer hike to a town over the mountain from Fethiye to Kaya. The trail was a section of the Lycian Way. There was a road to the town, and we could have taken a dolmus, but we wanted to train up a bit for some more hiking on the long distance trail we hoped to do--should the weather improve. We walked a kilometer or so on a road before we got to the trailhead, and Geo found a wallet on the ground, its contents strewn about. We gathered up all the little scraps and looked through the pile. There was a national photo ID card, a credit card, various receipts, and tucked in the wallet was 500 lira--$350. Whoa! We puzzled over what to do. We were a little afraid that if we just turned it over to the police, the money might not get back to the young man in the picture. But there was no telephone number. How could we find him? We asked Omer, our hotel man, and he felt the police would be best. Geo went to the main station. There was no one there who spoke English, so he could not explain to the guard outside, who would not let him in. Finally we went to the tourist office, and there one of the staff who did speak English went with us to a police station nearby. She and the officer went through the receipts and found that the boy had just paid for a driver’s ed class. They called the school, got his phone number, called him, and he said he’d be right over. George was pleased, for he wanted to hand the boy the wallet and the money himself, to know he’d truly gotten it. Twenty minutes later he arrived, and Geo gave him his things and shook his hand. He kept telling us thank you. A police staffer came out and in halting English said to us the boy was very lucky that we had found his wallet, and that he had a whole month’s pay in the wallet when he lost it. We wish we could have conversed with him, to find out how he could have lost it, and how long ago, but we had to be satisfied only with knowing he’d gotten it back. That, and I took his photo with George.
The Lycian Way
With a remarkable effort, a British woman (now a Turkish citizen) named Kate Clow has gotten the Turkish government to recognize and support a long distance hiking trail is the southern most part of Turkey sometimes called Lycia or Likya after the people who were early inhabitants and builders in stone, often in harbor settlements. She put together the system using a hodgepodge collection of goat herders’ trails, ancient links between towns, contemporary dirt roads, and a few created trails. It stretches from Fethiye in the west to Antalya in the east, and covers about 500 kilometers. When the route intersects major roads, there is a distinctive yellow sign describing the two destinations at hand. Along the path, there is a system of way markers, which are two small stripes, red and white, painted on rocks, trees or poles. Wilderness purists will cringe, but it is really great to have these guiding marks. When you come to a fork, often a red x on a rock let‘s you know which is NOT the way to go. It must be difficult in the extreme to hike the whole thing, for the route goes relentlessly up and down the contours of this rugged, mountainous coast, and it’s rough, rocky, narrow at times, often steep, brushy with the thorniest of shrubs, mainly far from any fresh water, extremely hot in summer with very little shade, and without huts or organized camping. However, it does pass through small villages, and there you can, we have heard, pitch a tent, find a bed or buy a meal. Our plan was to walk a few sections of the trail, parts we could organize from one town or another so we could hike with simply a day pack or at most, a slimmed down load of overnight gear suitable for staying in a pension. One such part we did went from a small hilltop settlement called Akbel down to the sea and the ruins of Patara near a town called Gelemis, a hike of about 14 kms. The highlight was a section of Roman aquaduct that contained many remnants of a siphon system (see two photos) the engineers designed to get the water over a low valley. It was remarkable to see how they had cemented the sections together, sections that had been hewn from blocks of stone with fittings much like what we see in water pipes today. Even more remarkable was to spend an hour in this spot completely alone. After the congestion at Ephesus--dozens of bus loads of people packed into a ruin that had been so ransacked, many of the few existing statues were copies of things now resting in London and Vienna and other big cities of the world--it was a joy to soak in the scene at the Delikkemer, as the siphon is called. This and dozens of other ruins along the Likyan Yolu, the trail’s Turkish name, are just laying about. You can sit on them, poke through them, exclaim and puzzle over this and that, and just let your imagination fill in the blanks. It’s not important to know that it was a fifth century BC Likyan settlement that got taken over by Greeks and then Romans, then Byzantine era folks who built Christian churches out of blocks and pillars they pulled out of falling down temples to Athena or Artemis. It is nice to just sit meditatively for a while on a block and let the weight of all that history soak into your consciousness along with the warmth from the stone.
We ended up spending three nights in Gelemis in a comfy hotel, enjoying a wide sandy beach (a three km hike away), protected from development, amazingly, because of nesting turtles, ruins and gorgeous sand dunes, and hiking to see further ruins, like what our hotel man, Mustafa, claimed is the world’s first light house. Only the bottom ¼ of it is still upright, but it was all of hewn stone, beautifully fitted together with a spiral staircase, once tall enough to shine a firelight over the dunes to show the way into the harbor of Patara. On our first afternoon at the beach, Geo napped and I went swimming, past the surf line and over my head. I soon realized a current was taking me slowly away from the beach. I completely forgot I was not supposed to fight the current--just try to cross it and get out of it. Instead I began to swim as hard as I could for shore. It was not a good feeling to see that I was making no progress. I began to get really tired, and swallowed some water. It suddenly struck me that I might not be able to get in. I decided I needed help. As a wave crested, I could see Geo, lying on his back, his red hat over his face. “George,” I would yell and wave, then the wave would slide under me, and I’d lose sight of him. A woman on the beach called out, “Are you okay?” “No,” I said. “Get George.” I pointed to the sleeping man. (Recreated scene for photo) She sent her husband (he later apologized to me, saying he was not a strong swimmer) after George and started in to the water toward me. I yelled at her not to come in. I could just see two of us stuck out there. Then there was Geo, dashing into the surf (he hates cold water, but he didn’t even flinch), soon able to reach out and grab my hand. We swam in together, Geo giving me occasional shoves and pulls until I could get my feet solidly on the sand. What a guy. My hero.
Another day on another section of the Likyan Way we took a dolmus from the delightful small city of Kas up into the hills to a place called Cukurbag. From there we walked higher still to explore a ruin, then we planned to walk back to Kas--a total of 14 kms. About noon we found a bit of stone wall in the shade to have lunch. There was no lunch in the pack. I had either left it at the ruin when we dipped into the bag for a snack, or it had come out of the unzipped pack accidentally when we were scrambling about. In any case, we had only our water and two pieces of bread. Apples, sardines and almonds were gone. We glumly ate some bread as we hiked along a gravel road. There was a truck with two women at the back. It was a traveling store, and they were buying batteries and light bulbs. I got out our trail guide which had a glossary. Mevey? I asked (fruit). Elma? (Apples). By gestures we gathered that the truck man had no fruit, but one of the women did. He gave her a bag, and we followed her to her house, just there, a lovely old stone and tile roofed number. She disappeared into a basement like room, and soon came back with a whole bag full of apples! We tried to explain that we were walking and could not carry a whole bag of apples, but we would happily take four. I got some coins from my pocket and held them out to her. She brushed my hand away roughly, as if to say, “How could you think I wanted money?” and just gave me the fruit. We hear Turkish village hospitality is remarkable, and this was our first experience with it. As is so often the case when you travel, if you are needy and have to ask for some help, that is often when you have the most memorable moments. She let me take her picture, too. Attached.
When we first arrived in Kas (the s has a tail, so it's Kash)a pension owner met our bus--named Suleyman for the sultan--so we let him carry a bag and we went to look at his place. It had a great roof terrace, and the room was fine, so we took it. Room with breakfast 50 Turkish Lira or $35. The breakfast was exceptionally nice, with lots of fruit and a pretty presentation (see photo). Suleyman’s sister-in-law was in the kitchen. We talked often with a guest named Brian who has retired to Turkey from the UK. It was interesting to learn that he has a one bedroom apartment in Fethiye for about $225 a month, which may be why we have met quite a few retired Bits here. He says Turkey has a three tiered economy: tourists pay dearly for everything, foreign residents pay somewhat increased prices, and locals pay rock bottom. Everything has to be negotiated, he says. We have noticed that it is rare to see fixed prices on things. You ask, and are told the price. So it depends on who you are, what you pay. We are often asked what country we are from. Many Turks think we are German. Geo wants to tell them we are from anywhere but the US, as he thinks Americans will be charged the most for everything.
Our last stop on the coast was Antalya, and city that boasts of being paradise, and in many ways they have a point. The climate is mild, fruits and veggies grow abundantly in the area, the city is set between mountains and sea and just glows, it has protected its old neighborhoods and ruins to some extent, so that narrow, charming streets with restored Ottoman era houses remain--now all pensions or shops, and it boasts a world class museum full of artifacts from area ancient cities. There were, among many glorious treasures, some elaborate sarcophagi. One, however, was small and plain. Around third century, AD. The text nearby explained that it was the tomb of a dog. An inscription had been diciphered which explained the dog had died suddenly and its owner was grief stricken. The dog, it said, was named Stephanos. Its owner was a woman named Rhodope. It was, she said, a happy dog.
Turkey is often cited as being a country that bridges Europe and Asia, and it is fun to see examples of that. Toilets come to mind. In bus stations and city-provided “WCs” there is usually a choice between the classic Asian squat toilet with its faucet and container of water, and the standard western model. We see the Asian phenomenon of small shops--some just a little larger than a closet--lining the streets. There’s a mini-mart selling bottled water, cigarettes, potato chips and sweets on every block. The poor owners are there for hours and hours every dang day. Yet Turkey is modern and western, with good roads, great buses and bus stations (they look like mini airports, with food stalls and internet connections and news on TV) block after block of five to twelve story apartment houses, all with balconies and tidy landscaping. The cities have good mass transit and parks, road signs and walk lights. On TV there are women news readers dressed fashionably with stylish hairdos. Ads are snappy and sell coke, cars, milk and McDonalds. TV soaps are very popular, with waitresses forgetting their customers to watch the latest episode. The current raging issue of headscarves is so typical of the dichotomy here. The country wants to be thought of as modern--and head scarves seem so backward. Yet, there is a strong urge to say people must be free to choose. If a woman cannot be true to herself and take off her scarf to go to college, then she shouldn’t have to. But so many modern Turks wish that she would. The current prime minister is taking a more conservative stance than has been the norm in the government. He is saying let them wear headscarves, and his wife has been wearing one for public events. Shocking! The military says--not at our events. So there’s tension.
Urhan Pamuk has written a book called Istanbul in which he describes Turkey’s great effort to be more western than eastern, and says that it has cost it a lot psychologically. He finds Istanbul a melancholy place, because it has long striven to be what it just isn’t and can’t be. Perhaps eventually Turkey will find an identity that it can be proud of, and it will be something uniquely its own, a blend, for sure, of east and west.
In any case, it’s a great country to visit, and we’ve enjoyed being here very much.
